Aimed explicitly to target end-to-end business operations by integrating disparate systems and quickly enabling third-party components, Kofax's Intelligent Automation is the latest addition to the "platform" arena, as the company continues to shift their long-term strategy toward broader automation solutions.

For the past eight years, Kofax has been busy acquiring solutions that would eventually become Intelligent Automation, spanning from business process management provider Singularity in 2011, to analytics firm Altosoft in 2013, to Kapow RPA in 2013. The latest additions of Nuance Document Imaging and Top Image Systems bring Kofax enhanced cloud capabilities for capture and workflow applications across mobile and print channels.

Capabilities of the platform are individually licensed for new customers, as Kofax pushes an “adopt and extend” approach to address various use case requirements and stage of automation journeys within organizations. However, existing Kofax RPA, Kofax Capture, and Kofax TotalAgility users get a leg up with free access to Kofax RPA, process orchestration, cognitive capture, analytics, communications generation, and e-signature products, which Kofax has dubbed the “Starter Pack.”

Kofax also announced their new online store, set to launch later this year. The Kofax marketplace will provide pre-built, low-code RPA robots, connectors, and solutions built on top of Kofax Intelligent Automation's open architecture from their community of over 20,000 customers and more than 650 global business partners. Some integrations and connectors that will be available in the store include the ability to digitize handwriting with Google Cloud Vision, pre-configured conversational AI use cases, and routing digitized information to Box folders based on AI-powered document classification capabilities.

Allison Lloyd serves as the Editor of DOCUMENT Strategy Media. She delivers thought leadership on strategic and plan-based solutions for managing the entire document, communication, and information process. Follow her on Twitter @AllisonYLloyd.